The Friarbots held a middle school workshop on Saturday, September 22nd for local schools. Team members and mentors led classes to inspire middle school students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. The Friarbots distributed over 300 instructional hours to students in the community and professional training to drive the robot. Middle school students used industry standard software such as Autodesk Inventor 2013 to build CAD models and learn the basics of industrial design. A total of 64 middle school students and over 40 parents attended the workshop. Parents were introduced to the team’s award-winning business setup and were informed about STEM and first programs in which their students can be involved.
In the Game Mechanisms session, students were introduced to the 2008 FIRST game, Overdrive. Given simplified rules and a basic understanding of the game, they were split into two groups and were instructed to discuss different possible designs for their robot. This exercise encouraged the students to work as a team and think of the best possible design.
In the Computer Aided Design session, (CAD) the students got to learn how to use Autodesk Inventor. The students used various aspects of the software to create snowmen. Among these aspects were parts, assemblies, sketches, dimension, and revolutions. One of the many people that participated in this great event commented, “This was a great experience and a whole lot of fun!” Not only did this event teach the youth of the community on the basics of CAD but also was a good chance for many of Team 3309 members to demonstrate their abilities to lead effectively. This taught them how to use professional CAD engineering software which is used by engineers in many different industries in the world today.
In the Drive Systems session, the students were given a chance to see how the robot operates and were able to drive the robot for themselves. They learned how to drive the robot and what items are used in that process. The students operated two different stations at a time, one station was to drive the robot, and the other was to operate the shooter on the robot. Overall, they learned many things about how the robot operates and how important the drive system is to the robot.
The Electrical session was taught by the Friarbot’s electrical committee chairman, Alex Tran. Alex started the session with a description of the resistor and explaining to the kids how to measure the resistance power of particular resistors with the color coatings. Then he split the kids into groups and gave them a voltmeter in which they would to measure the resistance the human body and how it increases as more people are added to the chain. He also introduced the kids to an Arduino microprocessor robot where they could witness the effects of a resistor to a light bulb; what happens when there is a larger or smaller amount of resistance. Along with the resistor, Alex explained the uses of a transistor and circuit board and showed the kids a functioning board he had built himself, thus concluding the electrical session.
Over 20 of the students who attended were from a Boy Scout Troop, and we had a Merit Badge counselor on-site to help the students complete their requirements. Parents were able to enjoy the pizza lunch with their children as well as take video and appreciate the kids’ robot-driving and snowman-designing skills.
Team 3309, the Friarbots, was founded at Servite in 2009 and has expanded to a tri-school team consisting of Servite, Rosary, and Connelly High School. We have now grown to over 60 students. In the past year, the Friarbots have experienced great success. At the regional competitions, we competed in rotating alliances against a total of 65 teams. We were semi-finalists at the Los Angeles Regional, and finalists at the Central Valley Regional in Madera. We also took home the very prestigious Entrepreneurship Award from the Los Angeles Regional which praised our “professionally structured team that presented itself more like a well established corporation than a high school robotics team.”